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Lady Oriza
Lady Oriza was a character who is referred to, but never appears, in the Dark Tower Series. She is spoken of in the legends of All-World, and may or may not have been based upon a real person. However, she serves as a figurehead for the Sisters of Oriza. The Legend of Oriza In the most famous story that is told of Lady Oriza, she was a young noblewoman who inherited a Barony by the River Send after the murder of her father, Lord Grenfall, by an outlaw prince known as Gray Dick. After consolidating her power, she made it known to Dick that she had accepted the forgiving doctrine of the Man Jesus, and as a peace offering invited him to a great banquet at her castle Waydon. Naturally, Gray Dick initially found this suggestion to be laughable, and told her so. However, he was eventually swayed by her assurances that only Lady Oriza and Gray Dick would be in attendance, that Oriza's men would not be waiting to attack and that Dick's men were welcome to search the dining hall for weapons as a precaution. As a further precaution, Lady Oriza specified that during the banquet she would be naked in order to demonstrate her lack of any concealed weaponry, as also would be Gray Dick himself. This last appealed to Dick, as Lady Oriza was beautiful and athletic, and his confidence was running high after killing Lord Grenfall. He saw the chance for a strategic alliance, or even marriage, and his baser instincts simply relished the idea of watching her naked. So the event went ahead as planned. Oriza's men retired from Waydon, while Dick's men completed their sweep and found no blades, guns, spears, bows or bahs. And thus the banquet began, with the handsome outlaw prince at one end of the table and the fair noblewoman at the other. Here the accounts of the tale diverge, with some narrators describing just two courses, while others - those who are confident of their ability to hold their audience - relating as many as ten, each stage concluded by a mutual toast by Oriza and Dick to a lasting peace and/or each other's beauty. What Dick didn't know, or had been blinded to by his vanity, was that despite all of her appearances Oriza was not in the least in a forgiving mood, and in fact was only barely managing to conceal her boiling hatred for Dick, his lack of remorse and his uncouth table manners. At the completion of the final course, when she could bear it no longer, she stood up, still naked, grabbed the nearest plate - which had been secretly weighted and given a sharp edge - and hurled it thirty feet across the room with an arm honed by weeks of practice. As Grey Dick's headless corpse fell to the ground, Lady Oriza made the evening's final toast; "May your first day in hell last ten thousand years, and may that one be the shortest." Inspiration of Weapon The above tale provides an origin story for the Oriza throwing plate, an intentional weapon designed to cause decapitation rather than an everyday object improvised for violent means. It is the primary weapon of the Sisters of Oriza, a matriarchal society whose stated purpose is to honour the memory of Lady Oriza. Category:The Dark Tower Characters Category:Women Category:Unfound Category:The Dark Tower Characters Category:Women Category:Unfound